


A Series of Conversations

by zarabithia



Category: DC Extended Universe
Genre: Discussion of Abortion, Forced Pregnancy, M/M, Oviposition, Rape Recovery, Rape results in pregnancy, Tentacle Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 00:02:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14484132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: Following a disastrous mission, Clark retreats to Smallville and Bruce to the Cave.  Neither their teammates nor Alfred are okay with that plan.





	A Series of Conversations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ciliegio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ciliegio/gifts).



There have been many people who have accused Bruce, over the years, of not being the best people person. 

Bruce readily agrees with that particular diagnosis.

It would be nice if his teammates understood that fact. 

It would be nice if Alfred _remembered_ that fact. 

~

"Nobody's heard from him since ... we came back," Barry states one day, showing up in the cave unexpectedly with half a Subway foot long and three chocolate chip cookies from the place Gordon loves. "Someone should check on him."

"Yes." Bruce leans back in his chair and looks at Barry pointedly. "How far away _is_ Smallville from Central City, again?" 

Barry gives him a disappointed look, but leaves the cookies behind. 

"It wouldn't do me much good to point out that Master Allen is correct, would it?" Alfred asks. At Bruce's silence, Alfred sighs and mutters under his breath, "No, I suspected not." 

~ 

Victor arrives next, clad in a hoodie and offering no food. 

"It's not like him to just stay away. He loves people," Victor tells Bruce. "Even the ones who don't deserve it." 

"He's been through a lot. He'll need time to process it," Bruce insists. 

"Yeah, we all needed time to process it," Victor answers. It's harsh, but Bruce supposes it's the truth. More than twenty years in Gotham have allowed Bruce to see a number of horrors, but even he wakes up many nights needing to throw up at the night terrors full of the monsters taking everything they'd wanted from Clark. 

He aches, sometimes, for the simpler dreams – when Clark had merely torn out his chest with his bare hands and Bruce hadn't had to watch, helplessly, as alien monsters tore into skin that should have been impenetrable. 

"As difficult as it was for you to watch it, it was twice as hard for Clark. He'll come back when he's ready," Bruce says dismissively.

Victor's disapproval is just as palpable as Barry's had been. 

Alfred's disappointment continues to be obvious, as well. "Sometimes, people need help standing back up after a fall, Master Bruce." 

Bruce ignores him.

~ 

The next to come, surprisingly, is Arthur. Arthur hadn't said anything during the mission and he'd left to attend matters in Atlantis as soon as they got back. 

Arthur shows up with a two bottles of beer and deposits on the computer in front of Bruce's face. It's a ploy to make Bruce look up at him and Bruce steadfastly refuses to give in. 

"It's been two fucking months, man." 

Bruce wants to ask if he honestly thinks Bruce hasn't been keeping track. He wants to ask if perhaps Bruce has just idly forgotten that the strongest of them – strongest in _every_ way - just went back to his farm and has ignored every attempt to contact him. 

"What do you suggest I do about it, Arthur?" 

It's a simple question, but it seems to infuriate Arthur for some reason.

"I don't know. Maybe go talk to the man? The two of you have your little ... bromance or whatever. Go fix it." 

"If you care that much, why don't you go talk to him? I'm sure you're more of an expert about laying eggs than I am anyway." 

Bruce is waiting for the punch. He knows he deserves it. 

Instead, he hears Arthur scoff. "Man, I told them you didn't care." 

When Arthur leaves, Alfred doesn't say anything.

~ 

 

Diana shows up last, which is actually unexpected. He wonders if she's already went to see Clark. He thinks it's for the best if she has, because she has the kind of gentle, soothing nature that Clark needs right now. 

What does Bruce have to offer Clark in advice for handling _trauma_?

Diana offers him a slice of cake that he recognizes from Clark's favorite restaurant in Paris.

"Take it to him," she says. 

"You can get there quicker," he rejoins. 

"You have a jet," she says stubbornly. 

"Diana - " 

"No. You cannot continue to stay here and suffer while he stays there and suffers," she says firmly. "We have lost both of you, and you allow that to be the case when you are the only one who can change it." 

"What am I supposed to do? Clark is gone. Okay? He is gone to you and Arthur and Barry and me. He isn't coming back. The sooner you accept that, the happier you will be." 

Diana looks at him for a long moment; he expects her to leave. Instead, her voice is full of disappointment. "You have given up." 

"I've accepted the truth." 

"You've accepted what's easiest for you to hear." 

"Why would it be easiest for me to hear that Clark's never coming back? That he's going to stay in Kansas for the rest of his life because all of my goddamn planning for that mission couldn't stop him from being violated?" 

"When my mother was a general," Diana answered softly. "In the days before Themyscira existed... she had a mission that ended similarly. She lost a friend that day, due to circumstances beyond her control. That friend walked away, suffering in ways that my mother could not fathom. The warrior in them both made it impossible for either to reach out. Then... Then Zeus created our island, and they both lost that chance." 

Diana squeezes his hand tightly and again offers the cake. "Your life will not be as long as my mother's, but your sorrow is just as deep. Fix what she could not, before your short life denies you the opportunity." 

"WE can't all be Amazons," he mutters. But he takes the cake from her. 

"Nobody is perfect," she says with a smile. "Tell Clark I said hello." 

When she leaves, Alfred looks visibly smug. "The jet is ready, Sir. And please tell Master Clark I said hello as well." 

~ 

When he arrives at the Kent farm, Martha is in her front yard, weeding her garden. He'd offered, once, to pay to have a gardener help her keep up the Kent farm, because it has to be exhausting work for an old woman. She'd told him that hard work never did anybody any harm, and he'd been quite aware of where Clark got most of his personality. He'd never forgotten.

"I brought Clark cake," he says, fumbling the greeting, because his charm never does him any favors with Martha Kent. She, like Alfred, can look right through him. 

"I'm sure I can do better than some bakery in Paris," she scoffs. "But in case Clark doesn't think so, you can take it to him. He's in the barn."

The walk from Martha Kent's flower garden to the Kent barn is easily the longest walk of Bruce's life. 

~ 

"Hello, Bruce." 

The way Clark greets him makes Bruce wonder if the others have been here already. Had they come and been turned away? Had they come and left of their own free will and Clark has been here, in Smallville, wondering why Bruce hadn't showed up yet? 

Bruce wonders those things, but he does not ask. He continues to make his way closer to Clark. He takes in the way that Clark's physical form is different. The rounded slope of his stomach is still high up in his abdomen, and it makes Bruce have so many questions about Kryptonian and Z'yxian pregnancies and breeding cycles. 

_"We thought you extinct. We thought there no one left to carry our species. We are so pleased to be wrong."_

It's a horrible memory and Bruce shakes his head and offers the cake. "Diana says hello. So does Alfred." 

Clark accepts the cake. "I can hear you thinking, Bruce. If you have something to ask, ask it." 

That's fair. 

But the directness of the question hurts Bruce in a way he was unprepared for; he'd expected evasion. He'd expected sadness. He'd even expected anger.

But Clark is still Clark after all has been done and not said... and that is not the type of grief Bruce is prepared for; it is not the type of grief that Gotham deals out to its traumatized. 

Clark makes it impossible to not deal in absolute truths, even more so than the half-god who holds a lasso of truth. 

"Why did you decide not to terminate it?" 

It sounds harsh, in the crisp spring air that permeates the Kent farm. It sounds brutal and crushing and cruel, and all of those are not blows he wants to deliver, not to Clark. 

He wonders, after all this time, why he can't be effortlessly kind to this one person who means so much. Even after everything that happened, why can't he just be _good_ to him without it taking so much effort?

If their places were different, Bruce knows Clark would be so much better at being _human_.

"It turns out, we misinterpreted them," Clark says simply. "Their conception of an egg... is not quiet the _Aliens_ reference that Barry believed." 

" _Alien_ ," Bruce corrects out of habit, because once there had been a pop-culture obsessed teenager in his home. Off Clark's confused look, he clarifies, "It is the _Alien_ franchise. There's really on one of the movies that is called _Aliens_ and it's arguably inferior." 

Clark smiles at him. It's small but kind, and Bruce has languished in the heat of deserts beneath unforgiving suns that make him feel less weak than that smile does. 

"The entire franchise is a little too dark for me. I'd just as soon take _Star Wars_ ," Clark answers. 

"It's a series full of genocide and planet destroying weapons. How is that less dark than _Alien_?" Bruce demands. It's easier to have this conversation than the one they should be having, so he focuses on it. 

"There's hope, though. Even when thinks are the darkest, there's still hope, and new hopes are born every day." 

"Hmn. _Star Trek_ is the hopeful one." Clark smiles again, and Bruce hates to press forward, but he does anyway. "You said we were wrong." 

"The tentacles... they do not just deposit eggs. I'm not just a host. There _are_ eggs, but the eggs can't come to fruition without a compatible species to donate a secondary DNA sample." Clark sighs and rubs his stomach. "The child will be half-Kyptonian."

Bruce wonders where this information is coming from; is it from the same technology that they used to bring Clark back to life? Is there an additional fortress of knowledge somewhere that Bruce doesn't know about? 

But maybe he will ask that later. 

"You feel obligated, then?" 

That makes a level of sense, Bruce supposes. The last son of Krypton, willing to make a sacrifice of his own life to carry on his people's species. It's foolish, but Bruce can understand it. 

"Did you feel obligated, with Robin?" 

"In a way. No one else could have understood - " 

"That isn't true. There are plenty of families who could have taken in a young child. Plenty just as capable of dealing with his trauma. You did it because you wanted to, because you were lonely and because you wanted to use your experiences to make someone's life better." 

Bruce frowns, because that sounds so selfish and ... true. 

"Maybe I was wrong," he says.

"Maybe I'm wrong, too," Clark answers. But he shrugs. "I don't know a whole lot about tentacles, so if the kid has those, I'll be confused. But I know what it's like to be ... all alone in the world. And perhaps that is a selfish reason to have a child, but ... I have found that families help ease the awkwardness of being a freak." 

"You aren't alone, Clark. Not anymore. And you aren't a freak." Bruce walks over to sit on the bale of hay next to Clark. "And I have been told... rather repeatedly... that attachments to people are healthy." 

"Alfred wanting an heir, again?" 

"Always." Bruce shakes his head and wonders what the Manor will look like with a tentacled toddler running around it. Well, that's what Alfred gets for wanting grandchildren. "On the bright side, if it does have tentacles, I'm sure Arthur has experience with that." 

"I hope the child will be a bit better looking than a squid," Clark says. "Share this cake with me? It's delicious, but excess sugar doesn't appear to make the kid very happy. Z'yxians not big on processed sugar, I suppose."

Clark offers his fork. 

Gently, Bruce accepts the offer.


End file.
